IT Operations Management

How to Use ESM in Facilities Management

The goal of facilities management is to ensure functionality, comfort, safety, and efficiency of buildings by integrating people, the physical surroundings, processes, and technology. This goal isn’t always met, unfortunately, because the technology in place isn’t always useful or effective.

That’s where enterprise service management comes in. ESM allows facilities management to become more efficient and fulfill more user requests – read on to learn more.

The Problem with Facilities Management Today

Why isn’t facilities management effective or efficient? It has to do with the industry’s reliance on paper-based processes. Paper-based processes are not only wasteful – they create information silos. The person who records information might know what was written down, but what about the rest of the department or even the company?

We’ll illustrate with an example. Let’s say you need to reserve three more tables for an event that’s taking place in a week. You visit the facilities management department to put in your request.

“An NIST report estimates that inadequate interoperability in the US capital facilities industries to be $15.8 billion per year”

When you arrive, you discover that there are no extra tables that you can reserve for your event – they’ve all been spoken for. You had no way of knowing that, because your organization doesn’t have any kind of digital system that tells you the availability of tables (or other resources). You wind up having to spend more time and money to rent the tables you need.

How Can Enterprise Service Management Make Facilities Management More Efficient and Effective?

ESM makes facilities management more efficient by digitizing as well as automating the request process. Instead of utilizing paper-based or other manual processes (such as making requests via email or phone calls), employees can ask for the services they need in a completely digital manner.

We’ll go back to the previous example of requesting extra tables for an event. With an ESM solution, you would either log into the self-service portal or open a chatbot window. In either scenario, you’d type in your request for three additional tables for that date.

“A 2017 report from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors identified the use of technology as one of the most important issues facing the facilities management industry”

ESM tools would query your request against the supply of tables that are available for that date. Within moments, the solution can tell you whether your request can be granted or not. There’s no more emailing, calling, or even having to visit the facilities management department because information isn’t stored in departmental silos – you can complete tasks faster because you’re not waiting for other people.

Facilities management isn’t exclusive to a single industry or vertical – every office requires them to ensure that buildings function properly and occupants get the services they need in a timely and efficient fashion. ESM helps facilities management teams deliver those service requests effectively and quickly. To learn more about how ESM improves facilities management, download From ITSM to ESM: The Evolution of the Digital Enterprise.